2016 is here and we at idtPlans would like to take a moment to thank our ever growing client base for making 2015 our best year to date.  2015 brought a record number of new clients, and new system features. We’ve started this year hard at work and we’re very excited to announce just a few of the new and exciting features that we have lined up for 2016 including:

• Advanced GIS integration.
• Active Directory and ADFS authentication.
• Improved event driven architecture and REST API.
• Enhancements to idtPlans Inspections.
• Even more payment gateway options & partnership with Link2Gov.
• Improved mobile and offline support.
• Improved infrastructure and performance.

Thanks again for all of the amazing references, recommendations, and new feature suggestions. We wish you all the very best in the new year and look forward to another groundbreaking year.

Happy New Year from idtPlans!

This patch addresses an intermittent multi-threading issue when pasting documents into the root project folder.  In addition functionality has been added to allow cut/copy and paste operations between projects and browser tabs.

This week we deployed several exciting system upgrades.

• ESRI GIS Integration – We have integrated ArcGIS in order to provide for enhanced GIS functionality including:
  • Auto-suggest address and parcel matches during the permit application process
  • Verify addresses & parcels against the GIS system upon confirmation
  • Automatically pull configured GIS layer information such as floodplain, district, township, overlay’s etc
  • Display project locations on a map
• Expanded permit application form elements to include new GIS address, parcel, and pull fields.
• Extended functionality for editing permit application form fields.
• Enhanced administrative productivity – Enable admins to edit application data quickly and easily from one comprehensive view.
• Project messaging system introduced – This provides a mechanism for flagging projects and displaying messages to authorized users.  Future enhancement to include peer to peer messaging and task assignments.

This week we have made several improvements regarding performance, accessibility, and GIS integration.

• Bluebeam integration has been completed and we can now support both Adobe Acrobat/Reader and Bluebeam Revu plan viewing, and commenting systems.
  • Reviewers can now easily overlay and compare documents versions.
  • Making text comments on a plan sheet now automatically creates a matching open issue.
  • Deleting text comments on a plan sheet now automatically removes the matching open issue.
  • Automatic and manual document repair functionality is now available.
  • Automatic and manual reduce file size functionality is now available.
  • Document markups can now be automatically flattened when a review cycle is completed, or manually flattened at any time.
  • Manual unflatten feature is now available.
• ESRI GIS integration has been completed allowing us to improve the user experience for both applicants and administrators on electronic plan review submittals.  We can now auto-suggest addresses, parcels, as well as pull GIS layer information based on location.
• The document manager and file upload module have been completely rewritten in HTML5.  This was done as a strategic move to move away from Adobe Flash.  Due to the security concerns of flash, and an increasing number of browsers and devices no longer supporting it we have migrated all existing functionality into a newer technology.  This results in faster page loading, better security, and improved user experience in mobile devices such as iPad and iPhone.
• Administrators can now edit plan review application data on a single page instead of stepping through the applicants view.  This should save time when an administrator needs to make a minor change to the application.
• Application form manager has been updated to provide more flexibility when creating permit application forms for electronic plan review and permitting.
• Email system has been improved to allow emails to be addressed to more than 50 recipients.
• Improved legacy support for IE 8+

This week, some minor fixes, and a new feature to embed images into comments without having to upload files.

• Fixed a bug where project county wasn’t always pre-populating correctly.
• Projects without a bid date now show a bid date of ‘-‘ instead of ‘ASAP’.
• Added mime type support for bluebeam file types.
• Fixed a display issue in safari where a hidden form field would sometimes display at the bottom of the project documents.
• Added alternating row striping to review cycle disciplines.
• Added a new feature to insert inline images into comments without uploading.
• Fixed an issue with data URI’s when embeding an image into a comment.
• Added styles for responsive images in IE.

This week we made several small hotfixes to the system

• Searching for projects via the navigation bar search is fixed.  Selecting a project from the auto-suggest feature now takes you directly to the project page instead of the advanced search page.
• There was a bug where you couldn’t enter a project tracking number until after a project was created.  This has been fixed.
• Activity tracking has been added to the project activation and deactivation functions.  We can now tell who deactivated or reactivated a project and when.
• Applicants can now deactivate their own projects that have been submitted for plan review as long as those projects have not yet been accepted for review.  This will allow applicants to self remove any duplicate submittals.
• Fixed an issue that could occur when copying workflows.
• Increased the timeout for the process that creates PDF documents.  This resolves an issue that could occur when creating a large PDF checklist.